


Midori Oni

by Queen_of_Moons67



Category: Tiger & Bunny, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, More characters to be added as we go, Shinsou Hitoshi Replaces Mineta Minoru, Time Travel, dad!Kotetsu with twenty new kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25344247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_of_Moons67/pseuds/Queen_of_Moons67
Summary: When Wild Tiger accidentally ends up 155 years in the future, he’s still being chased by a criminal mastermind, and as such does his best to blend into the new world around him. But Kotetsu has never been the best at hiding, and this time is no different:Before long, Wild Tiger is making ripples amongst villains as a new vigilante. And as he fights to simultaneously be a hero, stay safe, and find a way home, he stumbles upon two students of UA’s hero course. And then eighteen more.Aka an outsider view of Kotetsu, through the eyes of Class 1A.
Relationships: Kaburagi T. Kotetsu & Everyone
Comments: 13
Kudos: 67





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I've been working on this story for awhile, and I thought it was about time I finally shared it!
> 
> Canon timeline-wise, the story begins during the time leap after cour one of "Tiger & Bunny." Kotetsu enters the BNHA timeline during the sports festival.

Kotetsu panted, struggling to catch his breath when he was already out of Hundred Power and racing through the lowest part of Sternbild.

“Wild Tiger!” a voice called, echoing off the alley walls close behind him. “Why don’t you just give up? There’s nowhere to run!”

Kotetsu grinned. “Hear that, Bunny?” he asked. “He thinks there’s nowhere to run.”

Bunny’s voice was tinny through the comms, but the scoff came through loud and clear. “Focus, Wild Tiger. You’re going to take a right on the next street; I’m almost there myself.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m bringing this guy straight to you, don’t worry.”

There was just the sound of panting as Kotetsu leapt over a fallen trashcan, and he imagined Bunny pausing to think about what to say. Since dealing with Martinez and Kriem, they had both been trying to be more patient with one another and acknowledge each other’s ideas, and personally, Kotetsu thought they were working a lot better as partners. Bunny had actually agreed to Kotetsu’s idea of using himself as bait for this criminal, for one, and for another—

Kotetsu wouldn’t admit it to Bunny, but it was strange for him, running through the streets without his partner by his side. Having him on the comms just wasn’t the same.

But there was the corner, and with a grin, Kotetsu put on a burst of speed as he rounded it. Bunny was waiting for him.

* * *

Mario blinked, adjusted his glasses, and peered closer at the camera image before him as it was overwhelmed by a bright white light.

“Just a second folks, we might be having some technical difficulties. Orlando, can you zoom in for us and try to find Wild Tiger again?”

Orlando gave him a thumbs up, already messing with his camera, and Mario leaned back in his seat.

This segment had been weird from the very beginning. The criminal had been stopped while in the middle of robbing a bank, but had seemed unbothered by it—in fact, he’d seemed downright delighted to get the chance to taunt each hero as they arrived on the scene, his super strength power easily keeping the heroes back from being able to actually arrest him.

Barnaby and Wild Tiger had ended up in charge of the fight when Wild Tiger’s fight with the criminal had accidentally sent them down to Sternbild’s lower levels, where the HeroTV chopper couldn’t follow. Mario and Orlando had done their best to follow them from the skies, and report on how Wild Tiger had quickly run out of Hundred Power and started fleeing from the criminal instead of chasing him—and instead of escaping, the criminal had actually given chase in turn! But now…

Orlando shook his head and gave him a sideways thumb. Frowning, Mario directed his attention to the screen and began to narrate for their viewers.

“Orlando has gotten the view back for us, folks, but it—it doesn’t seem to be working that well. That is, we can see where Wild Tiger and the criminal just were, but we can’t actually see them now. Oh, and here comes Barnaby, looking for his partner—”

Mario kept talking, but he also gestured frantically for Orlando to contact Agnes. They had a missing hero on their hands.

* * *

Kotetsu stumbled to a halt, jaw dropping as Sternbild’s night sky was replaced by daylight and a cheering crowd. He himself was standing in the shadows beside them, but inching forward, he realized that they were all gathered around a wall of tv screens facing outwards from a store’s glass front.

There was someone with _green hair_ fighting someone else with red-and-white hair. What was this, some new kind of Christmas style?

Peering closer, Kotetsu noted with surprise the tagline was in Japanese. Thankful he knew his mother’s language, he read: “UA Sports Festival—Second Round of the Battle Tournament.” What on earth…?

Kotetsu tore his gaze away, meaning to see if any of the other televisions were showing something that actually made sense, but his eyes caught on the reflection of someone staring back at him. The criminal he’d been chasing grinned.

Kotetsu bolted, dashing into the nearest alley and heading away from the crowd. So far the criminal hadn’t attempted to harm any civilians, but there was no reason to take that risk.

“Come back, hero!” the criminal called, his feet slapping against the concrete as he followed Kotetsu.

“Not on your life!” Kotetsu replied, and the criminal laughed.

As Kotetsu focused back on the path before him, though, he realized that someone else had been unusually quiet through all of this.

“Bunny?”

No answer, but the comm was still on.

“Hey, Bunny, you there?”

Still nothing.

“Barnaby, this isn’t funny! Answer me!”

Silence yet again.

Cursing, Kotetsu made a series of quick turns, one after another. He’d obviously been transported somewhere new, likely in Japan. Maybe the comms were fried when the transport happened? They still looked like they were on, but Kotetsu knew weird things happened with technology sometimes. Case in point: Whatever happened to land him here.

For now, though, there was nothing Kotetsu could do about it. He wasn’t a tech wizard like Saito, and he had to focus on just evading the criminal for now. In this unfamiliar place, where his hero license didn’t apply and he had no Hundred Power for at least another forty-five minutes, he couldn’t risk a fight.

If he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t risk a fight even after his Hundred Power came back. He’d lost the first one; that was why he’d been leading the criminal to Bunny in the first place.

Kotetsu swerved around another corner and took the opportunity to look behind him. His tail was still a bit back, but—but was he gaining on him? Kotetsu couldn’t tell.

For a moment, he thought about dumping his suit. Its weight only slowed him down, and without his Hundred Power, it was less than useless.

It would take time for him to wrestle the suit off without mechanical help, though, and he might not remember where he dumped it. Plus, Saito would kill him if he lost it.

Resolving to losing the criminal the good old-fashioned way, Kotetsu turned deeper into this maze of alleys.

* * *

When Kotetsu’s Hundred Power finally returned, he took the opportunity to get away for good and turned on his speed, sprinting through a series of dizzying turns before grappling up to a roof. Safe in the high ground, he tried every rooftop entrance he came across before tiredly stumbling into the first open one he found and collapsing in a metal heap in a stairwell.

Kotetsu spent the night like that, still in his suit, and when he woke up, he made a mental note to never do that again. His poor, aching body did not like him right now—though Kotetsu liked his comms still being fried even less.

He would have to go out and try to figure out what all of this was himself. But he couldn’t do that while in his suit; that was just asking for the criminal to spot him again, and Kotetsu wasn’t in the mood for another high speed chase through the alleys. He would have to take the suit off.

* * *

An hour later, Kotetsu shielded his eyes with a hand as he walked out onto a busy street. Removing the suit had been an adventure and a half. He’d always had Saito by his side for it, which meant this time, he’d fought his way out mostly by randomly selecting pieces to remove individually. He felt bad about it, but he figured Saito should be able to put it back together—and if not, the man would probably just go to Maverick with the idea for a new set of matching suits for Tiger and Bunny.

Reasonably satisfied, Kotetsu had stashed the suit pieces behind some dust-covered boxes in a supply closet, then headed out.

Perhaps he should have second-guessed his outfit choice, though. His tight black under-armor was drawing a lot of looks.

After the third person he spotted openly checking him out, Kotetsu turned on his Hundred Power and sped through an apartment building at top speed, stopping only to snag a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt hanging in a communal laundry room. A little wet, and the theft made his skin prickle uncomfortably, but necessary.

As comfortable as he could be, given the circumstances, Kotetsu finally turned his full attention to finding a newspaper and figuring out where he was.

Or rather, he tried to, but Kotetsu was quickly distracted by just how strange his new surroundings were. Some people looked normal, but there were others with even weirder hair dyes than the two on TV the night before. And even stranger than that was the way some NEXTs’ powers had affected them. Kotetsu had never seen a NEXT mutate before, let alone take on the features of animals.

And then there was just how many people seemed to be NEXTs. Kotetsu was used to being one of a minority, but here, NEXTs seemed to actually be the majority. They walked the streets freely, unafraid of using their powers for trivial things. One boy idly stirred his coffee, finger steaming, while a girl used some of the eyes on the ends of her hair to read a book even while the eyes in her head watched where she was going.

The strangest thing of all, though, was how no one else blinked. Not a single person, whether they seemed to be a NEXT or not, was afraid of those using their powers. It was as though Kotetsu had stepped into some idealistic future where NEXTs were no longer discriminated against.

Finally spotting a stand selling newspapers, Kotetsu hurried over, picked one up, and scanned it. Like the TV the night before, and like most of the conversations around him, the text was in Japanese: “Musutafu Local News.” That wasn’t surprising.

What was surprising was the date next to it.

“Excuse me, sir?” Kotetsu asked the seller, handing him the newspaper. “Is this date right?”

The seller barely glanced at it. “Yep. Do you want to buy it?”

Numbly, Kotetsu shook his head and walked away.

He was 155 years in the future.

* * *

The first thing Kotetsu did was find a library and research everything he could about current events. He refused to touch anything from his entire time, worrying that this might be like one of those sci-fi novels where he risked accidentally changing everything.

Even with his research, though, he was missing things. Refusing to go too far back meant he missed a lot of both the civil rights movement for NEXTs, and the laws that were eventually put in place for both civilians and their present-day version of heroes.

Because of that, what he knew could generally be summed up as most of the population having powers, now called ‘quirks.’

A consequence of this was stricter laws on when and where a person could use their quirk; what Kotetsu had seen in public so far was generally the limit. There was also discrimination against the quirkless, which threw Kotetsu for a loop for a moment since he was used to being discriminated against for his Hundred Power, though he supposed it made sense considering he was now in the majority.

For a moment, Kotetsu wondered if he would still be discriminated in this future, since he as good as had no quirk for most of the day—then he shook his head and moved on. If he was, it wasn’t like it was anything he wasn’t used to. If anything, he thought wryly, it might be refreshing to be discriminated against for how weak his power was, instead of how powerful it could make him.

Hopefully, though, Kotetsu wouldn’t be in this future long enough to find out.

Unfortunately, he was losing that same hope every second longer he was stuck here. It had been nearly twenty-four hours, and the power still hadn’t faded.

For all Kotetsu knew, it would take technology to get him back—technology that not even this future seemed to have.

* * *

Kotetsu headed back to the same stairwell he’d stashed his suit in that night, and sighed when he woke there the next morning.

For now, he decided, he would act as though he would be stuck in this new society for the rest of his life: Settle in and build a base of support, before trying whatever it would take to find a way home. He would have to lay low, since it was possible the criminal who’d also gotten snapped here was still after him. It was also possible that same criminal knew how to get back home, but Kotetsu had nothing to make him want to take Kotetsu back with him. Besides, it was better to be the one surprising than the one being surprised. He could track down the criminal _and_ stay low.

The next big problem was money. Kotetsu needed it for food, shelter, a place to store his suit, toiletries, and just about everything else. He had a decent amount of cash stashed away in his suit for emergencies, but for the most part: For money, he needed a job, and for a job, he needed a new identity.

Kotetsu couldn’t trust that the heroes of this time wouldn’t see straight through a fake paper trail, which meant no seeking a position with them.

At the same time, this new society was different enough to the one that Kotetsu knew that he didn’t quite trust it anyway. Before, he knew that money motivated sponsors, while heroes competed but ultimately trusted each other. Now, he didn’t know what pushed society—if they did catch him, they might not let him go free. They might not even help him. And for now, that meant avoiding heroes and picking up smalltime jobs until he had the money for a new identity.

Kotetsu chased criminals for more than ten years; he knew how to track down a forger—though admittedly, this would be his first time hiring one.

* * *

It didn’t take long for Kotetsu to figure out the main issue with his plan: When you’re searching for one kind of criminal, it’s not hard to stumble upon others. Kotetsu managed to ignore them for as long as it took to set up a new civilian identity—Kaburagi Muramasa, after his brother—and to find a retail position.

Several weeks later, Kotetsu had enough money that, while he still returned to that stairwell every night, he felt comfortable caving to his instincts and putting his suit on for the first time since he’d taken it off that first morning.

Or at least, he tried.

Without Saito and his mechanics to help, it took Kotetsu an entire day to figure out how to piece his suit back together.

After that, though, Kotetsu started spending all of his free time on the streets. He knew Bunny wouldn’t be happy about him going out, but he also knew that Bunny would understand why Kotetsu couldn’t just sit still when there were people in need. In a compromise to his partner, though, he at least tried to stick to the shadows.

* * *

It only took a week and a half for the heroes and police to start hunting him.

* * *

Naomasa Tsukauchi pinned a sketch to an otherwise blank board, then sat on his desk and stared it. Glowing neon green eyes stared back.

A new vigilante had appeared on the streets, and those eyes were one of the only clues he had for finding the man. He hid behind armor that lit up when he used his quirk, though they hadn’t yet figured out what it was: Some of the villains he’d caught claimed super strength, others super hearing and a half dozen more.

Naomasa had been tempted to nickname the vigilante ‘Superman,’ after the classic comic, but the villains had already named him ‘Midori Oni.’

The Green Oni.

Naomasa couldn’t deny the vigilante had the typical horns and green coloring down perfectly, though he lacked a tiger pelt.

Sighing, Naomasa stood back up and grabbed a box already full with case files for villains Midori Oni had caught. He’d been busy, Naomasa could give him that—but vigilantism was illegal. They had heroes for a reason.


	2. Momo and Jirou

Momo walked along with Jirou. The two of them had decided to go out shopping, though they had ended up getting dinner first. And now, as they walked along together down the sidewalk, Momo couldn’t focus on anything but the warmth of her friend beside her and how fast her own heart was beating. This felt an awfully lot like a date. _Was_ it a date?

Momo glanced at Jirou, opened her mouth—

And practically jumped out of her skin when she heard a scream.

“Jirou—!”

“Let’s go!” Her friend blurted, grabbing her hand—and Momo was helpless to do anything but follow.

Besides, they might not be allowed to fight yet, but they also weren’t just going to abandon someone in trouble.

* * *

Momo and Jirou took a sharp turn down an alleyway and skidded to a stop next to a woman a short ways down. She was crouched with her back to a wall and watching two figures fighting in the middle of the alley. One of them was part rhino, and the other practically looked like a rhino, all done up in green, white, and black armor.

Momo didn’t recognize either of them, so she turned to help the woman to her feet, Jirou still at her side.

“Ma’am, you should go and get the police,” Jirou urged.

The woman shook her head, and made no movement except to clutch tighter at a purse with a torn handle. She didn’t take her eyes off the fight.

“He came out of nowhere.”

Jirou glanced at the two fighters, then back to the woman. “Which one?”

The woman blinked, then laughed a little. “Both, I suppose. But the thief had only just grabbed hold of my bag when that armored hero tackled him away. That’s why it’s all—”

She waved the broken handle.

Jirou nodded, and sure that her friend was taking good care of the civilian, Momo turned her attention back to the fight. Even knowing that the armored figure was the hero, she couldn’t place him. She supposed he might be a vigilante, but with how high-tech that armor looked… the hero had someone supplying him.

He was also well-trained, she noted with a wince as she watched the hero knock the thief out with a well-placed hit.

The hero reeled back away from the thief, unsteady on his feet for a second before he caught his balance, and Momo rushed to his side.

“Are you ok?” She asked.

“I’m fine,” he laughed, nodding. “Just used—well. No worries, I’m fine! Just need a breather, which I will now get.”

Jirou barked a laugh behind them, and Momo smiled. “That’s good. Uh…” She looked at him, unsure of how to politely tell him she had no idea what hero he was.

Thankfully, he seemed to understand, because he said, “I call myself Wild Tiger.” And then, sighing and gesturing carelessly, “Pretty much everyone else insists on using the name ‘Midori Oni.’”

“It suits you?” Momo offered, examining the suit again. She had to admit, she didn’t really see the tiger.

Clearly, though, the hero disagreed, because he immediately protested, “It doesn’t! What part of this suit says ‘oni’ to you?”

“All of it,” Jirou muttered to Momo, and she coughed to hide a laugh.

Midori Oni eyed them suspiciously, but then he straightened. “Ah! Ma’am, are you ok?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” the woman reassured.

Midori Oni nodded, and then turned to Momo and Jirou. They couldn’t see his face, but Momo couldn’t help the feeling that he’d suddenly become serious.

“Can I ask the three of you to stay together until the police show up? They, uh—” he coughed “—they would arrest me on sight for vigilantism.”

Momo blinked, but Jirou nodded.

“I guess you deserve to get scot-free this time,” Jirou teased.

Momo hesitated, unsure if they should let him go. But then he hadn’t really done anything wrong, had he? And the woman he saved was looking at him now with the same kind of gratefulness Momo saw directed at heroes every day—the same kind Momo hoped to see herself some day, after jobs well done.

“We’ll stay,” she agreed softly.

* * *

After how long they spent talking to the police, Momo would have thought they were tired of talking about Midori Oni, but before class the next day, she walked into the classroom to find Jirou excitedly holding court and telling their classmates all about him.

“—Midori Oni definitely knew what he was doing,” she finished.

“Really?” Midoriya asked, leaning forward. “I wonder if he’s learned from someone, or if he’s just new in town and worked as a vigilante somewhere else. I just, I try to keep track of both heroes and vigilantes, and I’ve never heard of a vigilante wearing bright green armor before, so you would think he’s fairly new at the job, but—”

Midoriya shook himself, blushing a bright red.

“Sorry!” he squeaked. “Do, um—do you know what his quirk is?”

Jirou opened her mouth, then paused. “Huh. I’m actually not sure. Momo?”

Momo shook her head. “I was too distracted by the civilian and the armor itself. Maybe it has something to do with engineering? Or super strength?”

Midoriya nodded quickly, finger tapping on the desk, and Momo walked to her own desk as Aizawa-sensei walked in and barked for the class to settle down.

She had been distracted by the armor, but her attention had been pulled by the tech—now that she was picturing it in her head, she realized there was another part of the armor that should have caught her eye.

The words.

There had been strange, logo-like words on Midori Oni’s armor, but they… they couldn’t actually be logos, could they? Heroes in Japan had always been sponsored by the government, and while some countries had experimented with company sponsorships, the United States had been the last to convert entirely to government sponsorships more than a century ago. There had been too much public concern about who the heroes were working for.

So why did a vigilante seem to have logos on his costume?


	3. Iida

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to the two people who left comments in the last week, within just a few days of each other! that really got this fic poking at my brain again and encouraged me to finish this chapter. hopefully the next chapter won't take as long, but for now, i hope you all enjoy this update!

Tenya hummed to himself as he walked home, finger tapping along on his thigh. Jirou and Kaminari had come to class obsessed with a new song, which of course meant that half their peers had been singing it by the time the day was done. Usually, Tenya would be annoyed; he tended to not like the rock that Jirou enjoyed or the pop that Kaminari favored. In this case, however, the song was melodic enough that Tenya could not help but—

_Clang_.

Whirling and bringing his arms reflexively into a defensive position, Tenya faced the shadowed alley the noise had come from.

_Clang_.

“Shit,” someone cursed. Tenya narrowed his eyes.

“Sir!” he exclaimed, jogging into the alley. “You are in public! Please refrain from… such language…”

Tenya trailed off at the sight before him. A man in bright green and white armor, who could only be the vigilante Momo and Jirou had met, was walking away from him a ways down the alley. Except, surely something was wrong. The armor of the right arm couldn’t be meant to be three times the size of the left? It nearly dragged on the ground, and even as Tenya watched, the vigilante stumbled, the arm hitting the ground with another _clang_.

Tenya cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Midori Oni-san? Do you need some help?”

The man might be a vigilante, and Tenya had just received a very clear lecture himself only a week ago about vigilantism, but this was not the same thing. This was a future hero helping someone in need, and if someone pointed out that that someone was a vigilante, well, this vigilante has already been vetted by his vice president, Momo, and her girlfriend, Jirou, both of whom Tenya held in high regard. And besides, Tenya wasn’t about to just leave the man in the alley like this, and—

“Eh?”

Tenya blinked. The vigilante, now only a short distance from Tenya, blinked back.

“Did you need something, kid?”

“Ah!” Tenya straightened and gestured at the arm, then at his own legs. “Yes! Midori Oni-san, thanks to my own engine-powered quirk, and the quirks of my family, I have become quite adept at engineering! Would you appreciate some help with your own quirk?”

“Ah,” the vigilante said, looking away. “It’s not actually my, uh, quirk, I have a power-up quirk. Completely unrelated to the armor.”

He looked back at Tenya and nodded. Tenya nodded firmly back, even more eager to help now that he knew he would just be working on armor, and not risking the possibility of injuring the vigilante further.

“I understand! And my question still stands; I will not just abandon you in such—“

“Whoa!” Midori Oni laughed and held up his smaller hand. “Ok. If you’re sure, I could use the help.”

Tenya beamed. He would have left the vigilante if he had insisted, but he was glad it hadn’t come to that.

“Sit there, perhaps?” he asked, gesturing to a bunch of crates stacked against the wall. There were two in front that were at perfect chair height.

Midori Oni nodded, and before Tenya knew it, he was sitting next to the vigilante, examining his armor.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen. The armor’s mechanisms were so old-fashioned they hadn’t been used in at least fifty years, but at the same time, the way they were used and the way they had been so carefully treated—like his own armor, or Present Mic-sensei’s speakers—made them seem like the armor could have been brand new tech.

Tenya said as much aloud, and Midori Oni rubbed the back of his head. The motion caused a grating screech when metal pushed against metal, and they both flinched at the sound.

“Sorry! Sorry…” Midori Oni said. “A good friend of mine made this armor for me, but I—well, I don’t always appreciate it or treat it like I should.” He looked down, fingers ghosting over the rough new scrapes, and then looked back at Tenya. “But my friend is gone now! Which means there’s no one but me to fix the armor when it breaks, so I’ve been trying to be more careful. You know, trying not to punch harder than the armor can take, dodging when I can. Things like that. Because if the armor breaks _too much_ …”

Midori Oni trailed off, still staring at the scrapes. He reminded Tenya of himself, just a few weeks ago, and so he fumbled for a new subject.

“What about your arm?” Tenya asked, holding up both it and the screwdriver he was working on it with. “What’s the point of… all this?”

There was no real polite way to say _making your arm extra big to the point of clumsiness_ , but Midori Oni brightened anyway. “It was a gift!” he explained. “From the same friend who made this armor. A good luck charm, for when I really need it.”

“An ultimate move,” Tenya realized, thinking of his own recipro burst; it overheated his engines to the point he could barely move after, but if he used it right, he wouldn’t need to do more anyway.

Midori Oni just tilted his head to the side, though, like he’d never heard of a hero’s ultimate move before.

Shrugging with his good arm, he said, “That’s one way to put it, kid.”

“But then why the trouble putting it back to normal?” Tenya wondered. Recipro burst had a similar affect on himself, after all, but he had long since learned how to tend to the damage. It was necessary, in case—

“I never learned how,” Midori Oni admitted, shoulders slumping. “My friend always took care of it. I’ve been struggling by myself, but if you hadn’t turned up, I would have dragged myself home and spent the next few hours trying to replicate how I fixed it last time.”

Tenya probably should have seen that one coming, but he still struggled with social interactions. He would talk to Tensei the next time he saw his brother and figure out where he went wrong this time. But for now—

“I can show you how to fix it?” he offered. “I’m pretty sure I figured it out. If you lock this mechanism back into place, and pull this lever—“

All in all, his demonstration took less than two minutes, and even that only because he had to alter his own efforts to show Midori Oni how to fix his arm himself. He would never tell the vigilante this, but the friend who made it had never intended for Midori Oni to fix the armor alone. This had always been a two-man job.

But when their work is done, the vigilante bowed to him multiple times, hands raised and clapped together between them in thanks. He was so over-the-top about it that Tenya himself felt a bit uncomfortable, but he was so sincere in his thanks that Tenya did his best to ignore it and, instead, change the subject.

“I attend UA’s hero course,” he told Midori Oni. “As do my two classmates you met the other day. If you ever need help again, you can count on us.”

“UA…?” the vigilante asked, barely audible behind his helmet, and then nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course! Thank you so much!”

“Thank you!” Tenya returned. He started to turn away—and then Aizawa-sensei’s eyes flashed before him, and he whirled back around. “Ah! Midori Oni-san! We can help with anything other than fighting! We will get in _a lot_ of trouble if we fight without our teacher’s permission!”

The vigilante laughed, but nodded and waved farewell, and Tenya bowed sharply in his direction before heading for the main road himself. His family was sure to worry if he didn’t hurry home, and vigilantes had only brought them all pain so far—but Tenya couldn’t help but hope that he and Midori Oni would meet again, if only to know the man remembered his instructions and knew that he wasn’t alone.


	4. Kaminari

Kaminari had lived with his quirk since it first manifested at age five; for all that he and his friends joked about his quirk overcharging, he knew how to handle electricity. He knew the tricks to dealing with static, he knew how to charge phones without overloading them, and he knew how to handle thunderstorms.

Usually.

The problem with thunderstorms was that the best way to deal with them was to know they were coming ahead of time and to be inside a grounded space long before the electricity in the air started to build. Being around friends and family who knew to not touch him, and who could help keep strangers from touching him, also helped.

Walking home from school, out in the open and in the middle of downtown when the clouds gathered and the rain fell, with no one he knew but himself, was the exact _opposite_ of dealing with his quirk.

And Kaminari could already feel the electricity building. It was probably just a flash storm, so it should pass quickly, but the electricity in the air—the electricity in himself—was climbing to threatening levels much too quickly. He couldn’t go inside and get away from it without risking his quirk frying someone else, but there were also all the people around him, and what did he do last time? Last time—last time—

Last time a freak storm hit he had still been in junior high, and his mom had ushered him under a bridge. That way he stayed dry, but he had plenty of room to avoid others.

There was nowhere like that in the middle of downtown, but there were plenty of overhangs—and that particular one right there belonged to a cafe that was already closed. Rushing over, Kaminari crouched on his heels and hugged himself tight. Part of it was for warmth, part of it was to try and keep a lid on his quirk, and part of it, he admitted, was to ground himself mentally. The adrenaline and fear of accidentally killing someone made him shiver, but he couldn’t close his eyes because someone might come too close.

Someone like whoever was making that clanking sound.

Peering out into the rain, Kaminarimade out a giant robot—and then the robot was crouching, and he was looking into the glowing green eyes of someone who could only be that new vigilante.

“Are you ok, kid?” Midori Oni asked.

And Kaminari was definitely not a kid, he was a teenager thank you very much, but—but he had heard about this vigilante’s kindness from his friends, and there was just something about him, and before he knew it he was blurting out to this stranger, “My quirk is electricity and with this storm I could accidentally fry you, you should get back.”

Midori Oni’s head tilted to one side while he listened, and when Kaminari was quiet, he hummed, nodded, and opened his faceplate to reveal a smiling face behind a mask.

“I used to have a friend with similar powers,” the vigilante said. “Can I teach you how she dealt with it?”

It was weird, the way Midori Oni said “powers” instead of “quirk,” but right now Kaminari was too cold, wet, and afraid to care. “Please!” he said.

Except apparently, Midori Oni’s friend would go to the roof of their building and fire lightning up into the sky, because someone had let her install a lightning rod on it that let the lightning come down safely. Kaminari can’t do that—though he would _definitely_ be talking to Aizawa-sensei about it, because holy shit that sounded awesome—but Midori Oni just nodded again and offered his arm.

For a moment, Kaminari just stared at it, uncomprehending—and then the vigilante popped open a small compartment to reveal a charging port.

“There’s a special charger,” Midori Oni revealed. “But the friend who has it is gone now, so I don’t have access to it, and my other friend who also charged it is gone, too, so I’ve been charging it at home. It takes forever though, so you’re really doing me a favor.”

He beamed at Kaminari, mask crinkling around his eyes with a sincerity Kaminari wasn’t used to from anyone but Kirishima.

In the few minutes they had been talking, Kaminari had accidentally uncovered two friends of the vigilante who are gone, people who the man is just used to bringing up in conversation. Sticking around any longer risks bringing up more, and Kaminari wasn’t sure he could deal with the social pressure.

But that meant leaving the man to a night of charging alone, and Kaminari sitting on the ground alone, when neither of them had to be.

Kaminari put his hand over the charging port, and they sat there and waited out the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all liked it! Please come bother me on tumblr at queenofmoons67 and/or leave a comment below!


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